Anyone here using Lightscribe? Comments?

[aguillon]

For those of you who do not know what I m talking about, Lightscribe is a new technology that enables people to use their Lightscribe enabled DVD burner to burn a (monochrome) label directly onto the disk (which has to be LS friendly). You first burn the data, then flip your disk over to burn the label, all this using the drive's laser. A few companies have started offering drives with the technology (HP and BenQ for instance).

http://www.lightscribe.com/

The technology looks interesting: it addresses the dangers of sticking labels onto DVDs (which can be harmful since it can throw the disk off balance); no more need for separate labels, printers, marker pens, makes it possible to 'label on the go' (the drive does it all).

Cons: I hear the technology takes forever (something like 28 minutes to burn a full high quality label); media is more expensive and hard to find.

Anybody out there care to comment? What drives are you using? How satisfied are you with it sofar? Has it been easy to find media and is it significantly more expensive? Is the technology that slow or for simple labels (say just titles for instance) it s significantly faster?

Any feedback appreciated.

Cheers

[slacker]

The only Lightscribe drive that I know of which has actually physically hit the distribution channels is the HP dvd640i and dvd640e. Here in California, CompUSA sells the drive for $169.00. They carry the Lightscribe CDs as well. But they still do not have the DVDs. For locally stocked DVDs, I must go to Best Buy where they sell for $15.00 per 10.

I can't comment on the technology yet because I haven't taken the drive out of the box yet. This weekend!